Re:YouTube asks channel owner to verify phone, permanently o...
by ochre-ogre on Monday February 17, 2025 @01:22AM
(#43075826)
I had a similar experience but I wanted it that way. The listing for my residential society (comprising of 30+ buildings) was being hijacked by Real Estate brokers and internet service providers. I went on a discord server where Google employees were known to hang out and informally help people - they gave me ownership of the listing. This has allowed me to reject updates various businesses in the area try to push every few months.
Google maps hijacking has become a huge issue in my country where scammers update the contact details of local businesses without their knowledge and then scam unsuspecting people calling to place orders or book a stay. The vast majority of business owners don't even know they can / should take ownership of their maps listing.
Re:YouTube asks channel owner to verify phone, permanently o...
by Balgair on Monday February 17, 2025 @02:01AM
(#43076028)
> I went on a discord server where Google employees were known to hang out and informally help people
Ummm, got any more details on where I can find that server?
Re:YouTube asks channel owner to verify phone, permanently o...
by ochre-ogre on Tuesday February 18, 2025 @03:36AM
(#43087380)
I found it via the Google sub-reddit. There appears to have been some kind of internal clampdown, I just checked and the Google Discord server has been renamed to The Tech Collective (https://discord.gg/techcollective). No idea if employees at Google are still a part of it.
In their infinite wisdom, Maps decided it'd be best to merge my listing with the listing for the building it's in - but also gave me admin rights over the entire building's listing.
Support refused to fathom that I don't want to have any degree of Maps authority over something that does not belong to me (though I could have definitely used this to my advantage for increasing bookings), and their instructions to unsplit/remove myself never worked.